


Back to Wonderland

by OhWowAltMal



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Sort Of, Wonderland, spoilers for the Orleans liveshow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 02:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18274379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhWowAltMal/pseuds/OhWowAltMal
Summary: When lich twins Edward and Lydia pull a trick far too convincing for Taakos liking, he may have found himself panicking and making some rash decisions. Just a little, though.He definitely doesn't break the umbrastaff in half, looking for his (real?) sister.An alternative look at the live show in Orleans, and how it could have gone.





	Back to Wonderland

He had to admit – despite all of the zombified angels, the threatening apocalypse, useless Gods and the return of one of their shittiest enemies; this was one _killer_ party.

The bursts of magic and the glints off their weapons contributed to the rave- esque  disco lighting of the club, the three of them patterned in rainbow strobed hues that looked fucking _sick_ when paired with the blacklight they had shone down on the dance floor.  Taako  had never fought while looking this good.  Taako  had never fought while having this much _fun_. Not even Merle, with his shitty half-dancing half spellcasting hip thrusts, not even Edward and Lydia, with their pop-punk outfits and shrieked threats, not even Magnus and his overzealous use of _his_ goddamn sword could ruin the absolute fucking ball of a time he was having here. Not even the fact that he was constantly being forced to dance – something that he would have been doing anyway, uh, thank you very much – could ruin it.

“Why are we even fighting! We’re in a fucking club! Me and you, liches bitches, a fucking dance-off, right now!” He dodged a punch from an angel dressed suspiciously and, unflatteringly, like a cherub and blasted a wave back with a powerful scorching ray, watching as Merle held up his Xtreme Teen Bible and shouted something about banishment. The music was pounding headachingly too loud for him to hear but it seemed that as per usual the cleric hadn't succeeded; aside from Lydia casting a slightly worried glance at her hand that, for a second, faded out of view, nothing seemed to happen. Thanks to Merle, anyway. 

Lydia, however, seemed to respond with a wicked grin and from the depths of her spandex bodysuit pulled out a small white square that she tapped at with elegant, long nails. The thumping music suddenly changed notes into a sharper, harsher, crunchier piece, and from behind him there was an all-echoing  goatlike  bray - and suddenly Taako was enveloped in a wall of piercing vines as Merle’s shouted warning was lost to pounding shoes and a thick bass drop.  It seemed Magnus had suffered the same fate;  Taako  caught sight of the fighter, bloodied and bruised, near enveloped in the writhing mass that dragged at his own skin with its thorns and pricked blood enough to soak through his now torn clothes. They were dumped on the ground again with no further warning but the vines weren’t gone, now, simply a whirling, green mass that was slowly beginning to encase their trio as bitter laughter too loud to be natural echoed throughout their moving prison.

A comical “Oh no!” Was shouted from an unseen Reggie, and the vines twisted tighter. 

“Don’t you fucking dare pull another stunt like back in  Goldcliff ,  you  dirty old fuck.”  Taako  pulled free from his dancing and threatened the cleric with a steely glare, who simply shrugged in response before cussing out the third member of their party. Following his line of sight, he gave a deep, long-suffering sigh as Magnus attempted to flex his way through the vines. Because of course he did.  Taako  already had his hole-thrower in hand by the time the thorns spat him out and Merle was rubbing his palms together with a spell sparking from his fingertips.

“Sometimes,” he muttered to himself as he stepped forward and readied the slingshot, “you just  gotta  show them how it’s done.”

A pristine ball of light shot from his aim, and burrowed a foot thick through the slowly shrinking wall of vines; unfortunately enough, only a foot wide.

He cursed. “Shit, Merle, listen – you gotta-”

“No can do!” He shouted back, hands shining with divine energy over Magnus, who was clutching his chest but looking a little  less worse  for wear. Because _now_ Is the time he actually decides to heal someone. “I’m a little busy fixing up Beefy o’ Burly over here!”

“Fuck!” 

Taako  turned back, crunching the numbers and figuring out the angles – because, shit, he knew math now, he fucking worked for fantasy NASA, how dope had that  been  – to see whether or not he could aim a leap right enough to slip on through. He doubted it, but it was worth a try. His  dex  had been shit since Wonderland, and there wasn’t -

As if on cue, their surroundings suddenly vanished.

Darkness, thick and suffocating, engulfed them, and the immediate and sudden silence was more deafening than any of the music that had just been playing. Even with his  darkvision ,  Taako  could see nothing aside from the shrouded figures of his friends. He couldn't even imagine how they were feeling about the lack of light considering none of them had his natural, elven sight advantage. Not that they needed to worry about it for long.

A wedge appeared on front of them, half his size and glowing like a neon sign, and then beside it another, and another. Like a stylized lemon they spiraled until they created a beaming, familiar circle, and with a sinking feeling of dread, Taako recognized the black symbols that were suddenly scorn into the otherwise perfect faces of each segment.

The Wheel of Sacrifice. 

With a bright and cloying  flash  the inky nothingness of their surroundings vanished and from beneath them, a catwalk lined with pulsing bulbs raised into view. Edward and Lydia peered out from behind the wheel like sneaking, evil little children before bursting into view sporting their wonderland outfits and wicked grins.  Taako  glanced behind him, and after a second, at himself. Edward and Lydia  weren't  the only ones dressed like it was a blast from the past; Magnus was staring at the brightly flashing  colored  walls with grey tints to his hair, and a pinkie missing from his hand; Merle, of course, looked no worse for wear; and  Taako  reached up to feel a fresh trickle of blood run from his currently broken nose. As he raised the  umbrastaff  in his hands to his view there was a distant, prideful cackling, but all of his senses were zeroed in now to only what he could see.

The tape that he had used to repair the  umbrastaff  after he broke  Lup  out from it was gone. The  battle-worn  scars that the Hunger had claimed from its elegant, carved wood was gone. A black beaded thread that Kravitz had given him once, that usually wound around the handle  magiked  into place in a charmingly contrasting decoration, was gone.

“Oh, brother, don’t you think  its  time we told them?”

Lydia’s sickeningly sweet taunts came through but bounced off of his thoughts like a fate-designed bubble, and dimly, he was aware of Magnus staggering to stand beside him. All he could see was the umbrastaff.

“I, uh I guess the act is up! I imagine it must be quite shocking to return to our stylish little torture  complex  – funny thing is, you never actually _left_.”

The lights here were too gaudy, too bright; flashing too loudly that his heart raced to keep up with the beat and his mouth was filled with a sickening coppery taste. He could hear the twins continuing to talk, Magnus shouting back, but his vision was nothing but his white-knuckled grip on  thirty-year-old  wood and weathered but not faded purple stretched fabric.

Of course Lup  was real. Of course, she wasn’t still trapped in the  umbrastaff  – it had been Lucretia, he repeated to himself, lips mouthing silent words and unfeeling of the gentle oak hand that touched at his waist. She, no, the Director, she had been the one who had stolen Lup away from him – Lup, his sister,  Lup , his twin,  Lup , his heart.  Lup , who he traveled with on the caravans - 

No, wait, he traveled on the caravans alone. Always alone.  White noise drowned out his surroundings and crackled loud in his ears.

But hadn't she had always been there – her eyes at the back of his head, her kindness to his snark? Remember the static, the veiled curtain that had been torn apart with a drop of ichor - 

Memories, hazy and flickering, tugged at the edges of his head, and a headache slammed into the backs of his eyes. Too much static, too many fuzzy words and memories, they pulled at the dark corners of his vision and twisted his brain into knots. What was real and what was not? What had been stolen from him and what was but a wonderland-dreamt nightmare? His chest ached. The flashing beats of the panels surrounding him pounded at the same pace of his head and he was briefly aware of his breathing scraping, unhealthily, at his lungs.

His twin. 

Her husband.

He doesn’t remember.

Kravitz – God, Kravitz, too good to be true Kravitz, a dreamt up lucid nightmare taunting him with what he could never deserve?

His mouth tasted like garlic.

A ship that sailed past the stars, a stupid name, what was the name, bonds, bonds, _bonds_. White lines of light too alike the strings of fate from Istus to be endless. Did he ever die? Had it been wishful thinking?

A mushroom planet. Like the ones he would cook in a pan with butter. Thousands of people dead rather than  forty . 

He  doesn't  remember.

Taako had always been alone in the caravans. 

No.

Where was she?

Why wasn’t she here?

Where was Lup?

She had always been here, with him all along, always protecting, always loving, waiting, burning her name into a wall with a box of bad macaroons. Lup trapped in the staff in wonderland, Lup, a spectral fiery nightmare screaming as she escaped with his snap, Lup, gone for ten years, gone for a hundred, Lup -

Who?

As if moving by muscle memory, dulled and senseless, his hands clenched the staff in a familiar but foreign motion; raising it high in the air and, ignorant of the suddenly desperate cries from his friends, bringing it down harsh against his knee with a violent crack. 

It's split remnants lay at his feet side by side, empty, unforgiving, taunting, and leaving him horribly, recognizably, alone. 

_ Who? _

From somewhere in the room, Taako heard somebody begin to scream.

It _had_ started out as a normal day – or, at least, as normal as you could get, considering the impending  apocalypse .

“Just because I'm _old_ doesn’t mean I know what to do in this sort of situation!” Kravitz was shouting at them from across the astral sea, wielding his scythe and in full reaper form as he attempted to shepherd the frantic waves of souls that were reaching up in grasping, desperate tendrils. “If anything, you’d know more about the end of the world than me – you had a hundred years' worth of practice!”

“You’re telling me you’ve never seen this before?”  Lup  shouted back, attempting to do the same, only ending up being heartily smacked through the air in a tailspin. “ Whats  Big Momma saying?”

Even from out of her vision, she could feel Kravitz’s disapproving frown at the nickname. “She’s not answering. I’m worried we’ve been cut off from the celestial plane again, like with The Hunger -”

“If  The  Hunger was back, we’d know.” Barry shot past them with a grim word and sliced a particularly hefty tendril in half, the echoed wailing souls an eerie soundtrack. “This is something else.”

She didn’t know how long they were at it for. Time in the astral plane was different, sluggish and ever-changing, fluctuating at the whimsy of the material world and creating several issues with the people who have connections to both sides. Whether it was worse today because of the disrupted universe or better, who’s to say. All she knew was that she had no idea how long they had been fighting for when the trawling sea froze, mid-swipe, still reached into the air in a still and silent captured moment before swiftly dissolving back into its calm if slightly ruffled state. Waves lapped at her ankles as she came down to stand at the bay alongside Kravitz and Barry. The souls were still again, though discontented. While the presence of the Raven Queen was still inexplicably gone, the major problem seemed to be taken care of for now.

“Why do I have a feeling we know exactly who's involved in this?” Barry said beside her with a huff, and she snorted.

“Wouldn't be surprised if those  numbnuts  had anything to do with it.” She waved outwards towards the sea, leaning back on her heels and weathering a long-suffering sigh. “Anyone  wanna  take bets on -”

A ringing from her Stone of  Farspeech , tucked deep away into her long red robe, cut her off, muffled but insistent and she fumbled for it with an annoyed grunt. She had too many pockets and folds and they were far too deep to actually hold anything important, but damn, did it look _good_. When she finally pulled it, shining white and buzzing, she answered it with a slant on her hips and an unimpressed look. “ _Please_ tell me this wasn’t your guy's fault.”

“ Lup ?  Lup ! You need to get over here like, right fucking now, like, right _fucking_ now-” Magnus’s voice rushed and broken crackled over the stone, loud and fast-paced,the tone of the call immediately frozen.

“Magnus?  What's  going on? Where are you?” There was  a  ongoing high-pitched sound on the background too incomprehensible to make out and it made it hard for his words to come through. Whatever it was, it was familiar. Too familiar. She paced forward into the water then back, worry building in her gut.

“The celestial plane, we – Reggie Fitz – Merle for  Pan's  sake can’t you cast Calm Emotions or something?”

“I’m out of spell slots!” Came a shouted, but faint reply, and Kravitz was already wielding his scythe. She went to speak again but Magnus cut her off.

“Can you do anything? Just make him stop  _screaming_ ,  Merle, please, I –”

With an abrupt, horrible sound, the background  note  suddenly stopped. It would have been comforting, if it wasn’t followed by Magnus’s panicked shout of “ Taako !” and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground before the call was cut off in a violently calm _blip_.

The rift was open for barely a second before she was diving through.

It was an adjustment; coming from a dark, soothing void to a brightly-flashing neon club scene, and  Lup  blinked a few times as her vision went wonky and struggled to focus on anything but colours. Kravitz stumbled in behind her and Barry too, all suffering the same fate. When she could finally see between strobes of light and glittering dance tiles, her eyes landed on Magnus, on Merle, on - 

“Taako?” Racing forward, dropping to her knees and dissolving her reaper uniform within a split second. He was lying on the ground between a knelt Magnus and Merle, curled into himself and shaking violently, fingers digging into his palms hard enough that blood was seeping down his wrists and dripping onto the floor. His eyes, misfocused and wild, made no move to register her arrival as he dry-heaved on the floor. She reached out to touch him and the fact that he didn’t even flinch away was somehow worse than the alternative. “What the fuck happened, Magnus, Koko, oh Gods, oh _baby_.”

“I don’t-” Magnus shook his head and Merle shuffled away, giving room for  Barry  who knelt in his  place.  Kravitz was right beside  Lup  with his own hands shaking in the air as he searched for something, anything to do to help. “It was Edward and Lydia, we were fighting them and then they used some kind of – some kind of illusion magic, I guess, pretended like we had never left Wonderland, and Taako just -”

“I think he was looking for you.” Merle interrupted and held up the remnants of the  Umbrastaff . It had been snapped in half, too eerily reminiscent of _Before_ to be comfortable and  Lup  unconsciously let out a pained sound. “He just broke it and then started screaming.”

Of course  he had been looking for her.  Of course  that would have been his first thought – and to break it, to have it be empty -

“Koko?  Taako , please, baby, I'm right here, look at me.” She gently unfolded one of his bleeding hands and took it in her own, winding their fingers together and ignoring the horrible sticky sensation. “It's Lup, I'm right here. Kravitz is right here too, see? We’re okay. Wonderland is gone. Everythings fine now.”

Everyone else watched with bated breath as she desperately tried to soothe her crumbling brother, unused to this kind of destruction, unused to _this_   Taako . A hundred years of running from death had, naturally, lead to some meltdowns here and there but this, this – nobody had seen this before, not from  Taako . Not from "i dont do emotions" Taako, not from "good out here" Taako. Nobody had ever seen this except Lup, and she had only seen it once.

They had been scouting along a cavernous area during one of the cycles after her and  Barrys  lich ritual, skirting along the sides of tall, red-earth cliffs that dove down in deep gulfs to small painted rivers. It was a dry world; filled with nothing but dust, dirt, and tossed about tumbleweeds. But it was peaceful. Quiet. Devoid of life aside from the odd lizard and circling birds.

Nobody should have died.

But the ground beneath her had crumbled under her weight as she walked along the edge of the canyon, a sharp-witted joke turning into a surprised scream as she tumbled down the cliff face and plunged thousands and thousands of feet onto unforgiving rock. It was a particularly unpleasant death. But her death wasn’t the problem. It was figuring out how to get back up the cliffs when your form is incoherent and unable to interact with the rockface surrounding you.  That was the problem.

It took her three months to figure out a pathway back up to topside, and a few days on top of that to find her way back to the  Starblaster . Everybody was relieved to see her, Barry the most; though he had figured what had happened having understood the complex limitations of a lich form, he had still worried.

Taako  had been _inconsolable_. 

He had spent three months alone. Three months wondering what had gone wrong, if something had happened to her lich form, if it  hadn't  worked out correctly – this was her first death since going ghost, and for her to not appear, still alive but as an emblazoned red skeletal figure, was the tipping point for his already barely-contained anxiety around the ritual. For all he knew, she was gone. Permanently. Agonizingly. He  hadn't  even been there when she had returned, shut up in his room, waiting for the next year with a fragment of a hope that she would reappear beside him. 

When she had entered their room he wouldn’t even look at her.

The second he noticed her in the room, it wasn’t a warm, friendly, ‘fuck you for scaring me’ kind of  reunion , not like she was expecting, nothing like when she had died before. She  hadn't  died, not for him, because even here that could be fixed – she had simply disappeared. She had left more questions than answers and  Taako  hadn’t known how to deal with that. How to deal with the fact that she was, quite simply, _gone_. Seeing her back and ethereal was – it broke him. He had been wound himself tighter and tighter over the months of her absence and the suddenness of her return was so violent he snapped. 

Last time, at least, she had managed to calm him down and explain what had happened with soothing words and patience. Now, she was less sure.

“ Taako , baby, focus on the sound of my voice, okay? We’re alright. I’m right here – look at me, look at me.” By now he had stopped shaking, but she wasn’t sure if that was for the worse or the better. Instead, he was simply lying still on the ground, clutching her hand like a lifeline and gaze glassy. His breathing had quietened down to a more sustainable pace though it was still fast and shuddering. It was more salvageable; but a lot more worrying to witness.

Lup  gestured for Kravitz to help her move him up as she couldn’t let go of his hand, not now, and tucked her free arm beneath his – helping to haul him into a sitting position and leaning all of his weight against her own body. She wrapped an arm tight around his back and pulled him close.

He was a dead weight. 

Slumped into her with his chin resting on her shoulder,  Lup  rubbed comforting circles into his back and murmured a constant stream of reassurances into his ear. Kravitz, crouched beside her now, gingerly threaded his hands through his matted, bloodied hair and began to untangle the knots. It went on like this for minutes. Magnus and Merle explained what had happened to Barry, then began to clean up the mess they had all left around them, shuffling off confused angels and a dazed Pan leaving the trio alone.

Eventually,  his hand twitched. Shuffled. Moved forward an inch. 

Then Taakos breath hitched and within a second he wound his arms tightly around  lups  shoulders, sobbing with shuddering breaths into her neck and clinging to her like it was the end of the world. Which, technically, it had just been.

“ Lup -” His voice was scratchy and broken, a bare fragment of a word, and she hushed him quietly. Rocking them back and forth she let him cry into his shoulder, shivering and shaking, but aware, healing. A hand darted out from between them and grabbed onto Kravitz’s lapels with a violent tug to pull him roughly into the embrace that caused more fumbling than elegance; but soon, his death-cooled arms were wrapped around the two of them, and  Taakos  breathing was beginning to steady. 

“I thought  -”He  hiccupped, ignoring  Lups  soothing noises. “You didn’t - I thought that maybe -”

“I know,  koko . I know.” She mumbled back, letting him sink back into comforting oblivion. 

“Barry.” Taako, after a few more minutes, croaked out. “I swear to Pan if I don’t see your blue fucking jeaned ass here within the next few seconds -”

The hug became much more tangled,  more so  when Magnus joined – despite the half-assed and ungenuine whining from  Taako  – and downright uncomfortable when Reggie dogpiled himself into the mix. But it was still comforting, the lull of warm, breathing, familiar smelling bodies, the reassurance of touch.

It was home . 

Taakos  bed wasn’t built for more than two, but in times of turmoil, you make do.

Lup  provided mattresses and blankets definitely not stolen from a Fantasy  Costcos  warehouses, and Magnus hauled a bunch of scratchy, plaid woven blankets from his home back in Ravens Roost thanks to interplanar rift travel.  Taako  made hot chocolate with shaky hands and Kravitz grounded his presence in the kitchen with faux-helpful hints and elaborate, badly-convincing ideas of how to make the recipe better. Angus looked on in a mix of slowly growing horror and excitement and relayed the latest Caleb Cleveland novel in short but excitable bursts. Barry found some scented candles hidden away in the storage boxes still cluttering his attic, and Merle, helpfully, tried to light them with sacred flame; helpfully, rather, singing  Barry's  eyebrows and making him frantically pat down flickering  scorch marks on his jeans. He settled for setting up the bedding arrangements instead.

Taako  was adamant that he was fine, that he was all good now, that he didn’t need help; but when he was curled into the side of Kravitz with  Lups  arms  ensnaring  him from behind and Merles fat, hairy dwarven arms looped around his legs, he had to admit that maybe he wasn't.

Not that any of these fuckers were gonna hear about it, though.

**Author's Note:**

> Because i've found my motivational niche and apparently its angst? i guess?   
> Listen i LOVE the antics of our tres horny boys and Taako absolutely demolishing Edward and Lydia in the name of his sister gave me life, but, that had to have been traumatizing for the boys, right? Thinking they had been back in wonderland? I mean, Magnus literally died. It was all i could think about after that ep and i absolutely had to do something with it so like here u go i guess


End file.
